Puppet MastersS


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US forces reportedly return to six previously abandoned bases in Syria

Tim Korso
Sputnik
Wed, 18 Dec 2019 18:40 UTC
us soldier syria
© AP Photo / Darko Bandic
Early in October, the US president announced the withdrawal of American troops from Syrian soil only to partially revert it at a later date. Some US servicemen stayed behind with the Pentagon claiming that they are guarding Syrian oil fields from falling back into the hands of terrorists.

US troops have returned to six out of 16 bases and outposts in Syria that had been previously abandoned during the October withdrawal ahead of a Turkish military operation in the country's north, Anadolu news agency reported.

The agency clarified that the American soldiers have mainly been deployed to the oil rich regions in the country's northeast close to its borders with Iraq and Turkey. According to Anadolu's information, the US holds a total of 11 bases and outposts, five of them located in Deir ez-Zor Province, two more in Raqqa. They are also reportedly building two additional outposts in Deir ez-Zor Province.

Previously, the news agency reported that Washington had sent a group of experts to the al-Omar oil field in Deir ez-Zor Province, currently controlled by local Kurdish militia. These experts are reportedly expected to boost oil production and to train local Kurds how to operate the oil field properly.

Comment: With any luck, the Americans will be out of Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq by 2084...

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Black Magic

'Renew or be replaced': Blair says Labour party has been taken over by far-left

Kylie MacLellan
Reuters
Wed, 18 Dec 2019 09:13 UTC
Blair
© REUTERS/Toby MelvilleFormer British Prime Minister Tony Blair speaks at the Hallam Conference Centre in London, Britain December 18, 2019.
Former British prime minister Tony Blair, Labour's most successful leader, on Wednesday urged the party to rebuild from electoral humiliation by rejecting the "protest movement with cult trimmings" created by outgoing leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Thursday's defeat was Labour's worst since 1935, and a battle for control is now under way between moderates and Corbyn's hard-left allies.

Blair won three elections for Labour by hauling it toward a business-friendly centrist platform, and was premier from 1997 to 2007. But he lost favor in part by sending British forces to back U.S. president George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003.


Comment: He's also one of the most widely despised PMs of all time: 'Tony Blair lied, cheated and privatized': Former PM slammed online for criticisms of current British politics


Corbyn's supporters say Blair both betrayed the working classes and undermined faith in politicians, and "Blairism" remains badly tarnished, both inside and outside Labour.

Comment: See also: Someone Meddled in the UK Election & It Wasn't Russia

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Propaganda

Newsweek trusts Bellingcat more than Reuters - journalist who quit over 'suppressed' OPCW story to RT


RT
Wed, 18 Dec 2019 17:32 UTC
newsweek
© AFP / Nicholas Kamm
Blind trust in controversial 'citizen investigation' outlet Bellingcat prompted Newsweek editors to drop a report on the latest OPCW leaks, the author of the piece who resigned from the magazine after the incident told RT.

Tareq Haddad announced his resignation from Newsweek last week, accusing the magazine of "suppressing" his attempt to report on a leaked email casting doubts on the results of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) investigation into an April 2018 chemical attack in Douma, Syria, which allegedly killed dozens of civilians. The OPCW sent a fact-finding mission to the site, which pinned the blame for the attack on Damascus. While witnesses who later spoke in the Hague said the White Helmets' video of the attack was staged.

Haddad also issued a scathing rebuke to the Newsweek - and Western journalism in general - by accusing it of siding with the American warmongers to promote the US wars and obscure the truth. Now he also revealed to RT that it was the editorial board's quite peculiar pick of trustworthy sources that gave a rise to the whole issue in the first place.

Haddad first approached his editors with an OPCW leaks story pitch, citing an opinion piece by Peter Hitchens in The Mail on Sunday.

"The fact that another British journalist has published it in a reputable publication, I thought, was more than enough for Newsweek to be able to do that," he told RT.

The editors simply discarded this idea by calling Hitchens - a man Haddad describes as an "accomplished journalist [working] for more than 12 years" - not trustworthy enough. Instead, they referred him to a Bellingcat article supposedly debunking the whole leak story.

Comment: See Haddad's piece, and further coverage of the OPCW scandal, here:

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Bug

Mad Maxine Waters: 'I believe' Trump-Putin conspiracy 'even though I don't have the facts to prove it'

Jessica Chasmar
The Washington Times
Tue, 17 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
Maxine Waters
© AP Photo/Jacquelyn MartinHouse Financial Services Committee Chair Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., asks a question of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Jay Clayton, during a committee hearing, Tuesday Sept. 24, 2019, on Capitol Hill in Washington.
Rep. Maxine Waters admitted Monday that she doesn't have the facts to prove her firmly held belief that President Trump colluded with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the 2016 presidential election.

Ms. Waters, California Democrat and chairwoman of the House Financial Service Committee, told CNN's Erin Burnett that she still believes Mr. Trump proposed lifting sanctions against Russia in exchange for helping him win in the election, even though a lengthy investigation conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of collusion between Mr. Trump's campaign and the Kremlin.

"I had done some research, and I knew about [Mr. Trump's] alignment with Putin, I knew about [Paul] Manafort and what the relationship was and the fact that he had been sent there by Putin, in essence, to head up the president's campaign," Ms. Waters said.


Comment: Another fact: Its the Democrats who did the real interfering with the US presidential elections (and will likely try and do it again this next go around).

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Light Saber

Trump pens fiery letter to Pelosi, and to history

Gregg Re
Fox News
Wed, 18 Dec 2019 16:43 UTC
Trump Pelosi
© Reuters/James Lawler Duggan/Jonathan ErnstSpeaker of the House Nancy Pelosi • President Donald Trump
President Trump, in a blistering, no-holds-barred six-page letter Tuesday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., lambasted the Democrats' impeachment inquiry as an "open war on American Democracy," writing that she has violated her oath of office and "cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment!"

"Everyone, you included, knows what is really happening," Trump said, just a day before House Democrats were expected to vote to impeach him. "Your chosen candidate lost the election in 2016, in an Electoral College landslide (306-227), and you and your party have never recovered from this defeat. So you have spent three straight years attempting to overturn the will of the American people and nullify their votes. You view democracy as your enemy!"
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Eye 1

FISA Court slams FBI: 'Misconduct... calls into question' every warrant FBI ever got

Christopher Bedford
The Federalist
Tue, 17 Dec 2019 16:24 UTC
comey obama sean joyce
© White House(L-R) James Comey, FBI Dep. Director Sean Joyce, President Obama in 2013
Set deadline for reform, stops shy of suggesting punishment

The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court harshly rebuked the FBI in a Tuesday afternoon order, saying FBI misconduct in applying for warrants against Trump campaign official Carter Page calls all past warrant applications into question, and setting a fast-approaching deadline to fix the system.

The order was issued in response to an inspector general report that found the FBI failed to include exculpatory evidence in its four successful applications for surveillance warrants on U.S. citizen, former Naval officer, and then-Trump campaign official Carter Page. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) is a secret court set up in 1978 to grant U.S. intelligence agencies warrants to spy on suspected spies from other countries, or, literally, to surveil foreign intelligence.

Comment:

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Jet3

Russia's new 5gen supersonic stealth Su-57 fighter jets ace all objectives during trials in Syria


RT
Wed, 18 Dec 2019 10:24 UTC
Russia Su-57 5gen
© Sputnik / Vladimir Astapkovich
The testing of Russia's most advanced combat aircraft has yielded superb results, a senior military official has revealed, as the stealth aircraft enters its mass-production phase.

The jets "have successfully accomplished all of their tasks" during trials in Syria, Chief of General Staff General Valery Gerasimov told a group of foreign military attachés on Wednesday.

Gerasimov said that the campaign against militants in Syria has provided a "new impetus for further improvement" of all types of weaponry, including airborne. He added that the Air Force has taken delivery of 139 warplanes of various designs this year.

The Su-57s flew their first combat missions in Syria last year. They are already in mass production and the Air Force is set to commission 76 brand new fighters by 2028.

Comment: See also:

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Newspaper

Scaremongering? Refugee crisis over Kashmir could dwarf all others - Imran Khan


RT
Wed, 18 Dec 2019 02:14 UTC
Pakistan's Ghauri missile
© Reuters / Mian KhursheedPakistan's Ghauri nuclear-capable missile .
Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan has said that India's tough new policies in Kashmir risk creating a severe refugee crisis that could then create a domino effect, even leading to a full-blown war with Islamabad.

Khan made his remarks while opening the UN-sponsored Global Refugee Forum in Geneva, Switzerland, on Tuesday.

He warned that if India tries to change the demography of its Muslim-majority Kashmir region, it will trigger "another refugee crisis that would dwarf other crises." From there on, the ensuing chaos and tensions could spiral into an open conflict between India and Pakistan, he warned.

Comment: There are very few Muslim refugees from India to Pakistan during recent decades. Recent Citizenship Amendment Act is aimed at addressing the immigrants from Bangladesh to India.

See also:

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Snakes in Suits

Family emergency keeps Jerry Nadler out of impeachment hearing

Virginia Kruta
Daily Caller
Tue, 17 Dec 2019 12:18 UTC
nadler
© Alex Wong/Getty Images
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler missed Tuesday's impeachment hearing in the Rules Committee due to a family emergency.

According to a report from Politico, Nadler went home to New York to handle a family emergency — the details of which were not initially disclosed — and was expected to return to Washington either late Tuesday or early Wednesday morning.

Comment: Who is really ill?

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Star of David

Gaza in 2020: How easily the world deletes Palestinian suffering

David Hearst
Middle East Eye
Fri, 13 Dec 2019 01:47 UTC
gaza baby dead
© Agence France-PresseA man holds the hand of Maria al-Gazali, a 14-month-old Palestinian baby, as her body lies on a stretcher at a hospital in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza on 5 May 2019. She died during an Israeli air strike
I would like you to try an exercise. Google the words "family of eight killed" and you will be given several options - one in Sonora, Mexico, another in Pike, Ohio, yet another in Mendocino County, California.

But Google's massive memory seems to have suffered amnesia over what took place just one month ago in Deir al-Balah, Gaza.

To recap, because you, too, may have forgotten: on 14 November, an Israeli pilot dropped a one-tonne JDAM bomb on a building where eight members of one family were sleeping. Five of them were children. Two of them were infants.
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